August 20, 2015

Blacks, education and prison

Charles M. Blow had an excellent article today in the New York Times regarding "black lives matter" which prompted me to write this post.

Charles M Blow

We are letting emotion drain our brain of logic on this subject. Yes society is biased against blacks and the poor. However, when it comes to the number of black people in prison compared to the total population the thought process used here does not take into account other important factors,

Crime is more likely to occur by someone who is poor and/or poorly educated. A disproportionate percentage of citizens falling in these categories are black. As a result it follows that the ethnicity of prisoners will tend to be disproportionately black not just because of their skin color but also because of their education and poverty level?

I suspect the same relationship exist between whites who are incarcerated and education. The segment of the white population that are less educated are more likely to be incarcerated. In the meantime what are we suppose to do; not arrest the criminal?

This is why we need to improve our education system across the board but more specifically in black communities. I am sure there is a bias against black people in our law enforcement industry that needs to be worked on, but the problem also goes much deeper than that and we need to recognize this.

This is a major reason why Obama needs to push for one of his objectives he stated in his state of the union address; free education for the first 2 years of college or trade school. In today's world you need an education beyond high school to get a good job. Many students from a poor family understand they will not be able to go to college because of a lack of money so they does not bother to get a high school diploma.